And so it goes

I am in the midst of healing. Much healing. Healing is painful and itchy. But these itches are in places that one cannot easily scratch. Like they aren't physical places. Many years ago I had a dear and intimate friend with whom I shared everything. My life, my soul, the bright and the dark. I had never had such a close and intimate relationship ever before in my life. It was a heady experience. Perhaps I shared too much, perhaps not enough, perhaps it didn't matter. Perhaps I was not the problem; what I did or did not do. Nonetheless, at the end, she used everything she knew about me to tear me open. She did not tell anyone else. She kept my confidence, then. But she tore me into little shreds and scattered me about the room. She attacked my sex life, my deepest secrets were bandied about and made light of, made to seem like defects instead of the wounds or personal parts of me that they are. This was a loved and trusted friend. I know this sounds petty and childish...at least to me. it was a long time ago. But, I have never trusted anyone with a confidence since. Nothing that wasn't already public knowledge or that I was reasonably sure I could stand to have made fun of or made light of or turned on me in wome unforseen way. Yes, this does limit relationships. But, I was so wounded by her behaviour that it has taken me 8 years to be able to admit that. To move from, *What a fucking bitch.* to *That really hurt me.* Do I think she did that intentionally? Do I think she set me up? No, I do not. Which is the single most important fact about the whole situation. She was not a malicious person. She did not set out to hurt me like that. I don't even think she meant it to hurt like it did at the time. I think I was just in the right place at the right time and I was the one who caught the full blast of whatever the hell was going on with her. She wasn't even angry at me. I still don't know what happened. She blamed it on SAD. That's nice. You have a name for what you have. All I have are lots of open wounds. Wounds that hurt so bad there weren't even tears for them. I knew that if the tears started they would never stop. That's why I needed 8 years between the hurt and the healing. It took that long for the wounds to close enough to be able to look at them. Like when you hurt yourself and you know it's bad and you know if you look at it you'll pass out. Like that.